Stranded
by Bainaku
Summary: After a fierce battle, Kim and Shego find themselves in an agonizing and troublesome predicament.  Can they work together to survive?  Shameless hints, coughs, and nudges at Kigo.  Critiques and comments appreciated!  Chapter Four added!
1. Chapter One:  The Crash

**Warning: **This story will eventually be Kigo, and elements of said Kim/Shego goodness are present even in this first chapter. If you don't like that sort of thing, please read no more. Also, me writing Kigo fanfiction doesn't necessarily mean I despise Ron Stoppable or any other characters in the show. This pairing just happens to be my favorite.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Kim Possible. Kim, Shego, Ron, Wade, Drakken, and all the rest are copyright to Disney, Bob Schooley, and Mark McCorkle.

**Stranded: The Crash**

Kim Possible was fighting for her life.

She just wasn't performing up to par today, she thought as she twisted away from Shego, feeling the deadly black-tipped fingers graze the cloth of the uniform at her hip. The battlefield beneath her feet, a mix of slushy snow and mud, gave way slightly, and she was forced to scrabble for purchase as her opponent's laughter rang cruelly, mercilessly in her ears. Reaching up with a quivering hand to push errant strands of crimson hair from her face once she'd steadied herself, the teen superhero panted, curving her other fingers over a stitch in her side.

"What's the matter, Kimmie?" Shego purred. She advanced, keeping Kim pinned with a gaze that was every bit as predatory, Kim thought, feeling a stab of panic somewhere low in her stomach, as one that might belong to a lioness going in for the kill. Shego, unlike Kim, was having no problems with her fighting form today. Her boots, shining black and flawless, found perfect footholds in the mess of snow; her clawlike fingers flexed in readiness at her sides, and her stance, firm and fierce, showed nothing but confidence. Her elegantly carved features—more handsome than pretty, Kim had always thought; it was the sneer. Nothing a bit of blush and a nice smile couldn't cure.—veritably glowed with relish at Kim's evident predicament. "Getting tired?"

"You wish!" Kim snarled in turn. Her voice came out as something like a hoarse sob, and she resisted the urge to clap her hand over her mouth in horror. She'd already had to yell at Ron five times over the past hour to _Look out, watch it, run away, she's about to cleave your head in two_!—it was no small wonder she was losing her voice. The exhausted agony twisting and writhing behind it, however: that was entirely different. She was having a hard time seeing straight. Before her, Shego's form blurred and wobbled as tears pricked traitorously at the corners of her eyes.

_I can do anything, _she reminded herself mentally, trying to psyche herself up again. _I can do anything. I'm a Possible. I'm _Kim _Possible. _She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper, unable to steer her thoughts away from the downward spiral they took under the influence of exhaustion. _I'm also tired, _she heard the deepest parts of her soul admit. The words echoed in the chambers of her mind, reverberating so fiercely that she could feel the quivering ache at the small of her back. _I've gone three days with only two hours of sleep. I've been fighting or running the rest of the time, or hauling Ron out of the way of trouble. I'm beginning to regret ever leaving Middleton in the first place—Drakken is _so _not worth this._

"You don't sound so sure, princess," Shego replied smoothly. Kim was almost startled to see that her opponent had stopped moving forward—rather, Shego stood still before her, head tipped to the side, venomous green eyes trained on the superhero. The sneer was melting from her dark lips—was that sympathy, sparking in that heartless gaze? She seemed to be relaxing, Kim thought—she seemed to be, of all things, backing down.

_I'm losing it, _Kim heard her consciousness giggle disjointedly. _Really losing it._

She jerked as the Kimmunicator hummed and buzzed in her pocket. Wade, she knew immediately, likely wanting to ask her about the situation of which she could no longer profess complete control. Brushing her hair out of her eyes again, she attempted to ignore the insistent prods of the instrument in her pocket and squinted at the villain before her, done up in the usual shades of black and green, a walking example of fashion Feng Shui. White moths of fatigue fluttered at the edges of her vision—or snowflakes. Kim had no way of being certain any longer.

She vaguely remembered getting a beep from Wade on a Friday, just after cheer practice and just before the daily trot to Bueno Nacho with Ron. She remembered hauling her faithful sidekick, shirt still spotted with fake foam from his mascot suit, to get changed for battle; she remembered commandeering a jet from one of her many appreciative former rescues to get to the location of Drakken's newest lair in far Russia, following Wade's directions and the trusty tracking blip on the Kimmunicator. She remembered parachuting to and infiltrating the lair without a problem, evading the bumbling guards—Shego was nowhere to be found—and plucking an apparently stolen microchip from right beneath Drakken's nose, Ron snickering in the background and giving her a silent highfive when she returned to his side. Rufus had done a celebratory jig on the boy's thin shoulder, and Kim remembered smiling at him, feeling relieved and somewhat miffed. They were going to be home for Saturday's breakfast, having accomplished the mission in less than thirty minutes.

Wade had interrupted their flight home with another crisis involving a jailbreak in India, and it had taken much pleading on Kim's part to convince the pilot of their borrowed craft to land, refuel, and take off again within the hour, bound for Bangalore. Kim had snagged her two hours of sleep on that flight, dozing off to Ron's snores and Rufus's shrill, half-whistled wheezes, her hands tucked in her lap and her gloves buried in her pocket next to the recovered microchip.

She recalled being jolted awake by the sound of ripping metal and the sudden toss of her hair in all directions. She'd opened her eyes to find a gaping hole in the side of small plane, Shego stretching her glowing green hand through the gash to widen it; Ron had been spazzing out in front of her and struggling to remove a tangled seatbelt. The wind had plucked at her clothes, and snow whirled into the cabin as Shego thrust her body forward, boarding the plane with a single graceful wriggle. Kim caught a glimpse of a hovercraft falling out of sight in the atmosphere behind the villainess, piloted by a cackling Drakken, and she'd stirred herself to action as Shego, predictably ignoring Ron's presence altogether, had stepped toward her to engage her in combat, snowflakes melting in her raven hair and in her eyelashes.

They'd been going at it for about ten minutes and had made a general mess of the cabin, scattering seats everywhere and scorching poor Ron at least twice, when one of Shego's plasma bolts went crashing ill-aimedly into the pilot's door, melting it and making it into the cockpit. Kim easily recollected the horrible drop of her stomach at the pilot's agonized shriek; she'd seen Shego's face contort into an expression that had been either pure malice or utter horror, and then the plane had begun to take a serious nosedive, plummeting without precedent into a world of swirling white.

As an experienced superhero that had traveled all over the world in an effort to eradicate global crime, Kim Possible was used to and knew how to handle—or rather, _survive_—plane crashes. Ron Stoppable, though subject to screaming like a little girl throughout the entire process of the crash, was just as capable. Shego, Kim had thought as the plane crunched into permafrost and spun them all like silver bearings in a pinball machine, had likely brought down plenty of aircraft before.

They'd all come out of the crash alive, though the pilot was suffering from severe burns and Ron, by the look of a rapidly swelling left leg, had managed to sprain or break several somethings on the way down. Kim hadn't been able to tend to him or the pilot, much to her chagrin—Shego attacked her the moment the plane lurched to a halt, and Kim had only precious seconds to drag both her sidekick and the unconscious man to the lee of the downed craft, hoping to protect them from snow and plasma bolts, before she was forced to race away from them again into a rapidly darkening and entirely alien environment, Shego hot on her heels.

They'd been up and down this damned mountain all night and since then, Kim a rabbit guarding a microchip carrot and Shego a fox bent on getting said carrot. Kim assumed that, given their course before Shego's interruption, they'd crashed somewhere in the Himalayas—perhaps Tibet. She'd been given no opportunity to check the Kimmunicator for current coordinates or to ask Wade for a pickup: Shego was tireless, dogging her every step, mocking her every breath, flushing her from her every hiding place. Toying with her. Running her senseless. Playing with her head.

The smell of something burning wafted to Kim's nostrils, jarring her out of her miserable reverie. _If there were a Starbucks nearby, _she thought desperately, though she wasn't much of one to drink coffee, _I'd draw Shego there and snag an expresso in the meantime. _Chancing a look away from the villainess, Kim turned her head to look down through a scant treeline at the crumpled silver figure of the crashed jet. She could make out two tiny black figures wobbling away from it, one dragging the other—Ron and the pilot. Flames licked up through the windshield of the cockpit, and Kim cursed mentally, knowing the sudden combustion was probably due to the rising dawn.

A boot crunched in the slush, and Kim jerked her head back to the Shego situation just in time to narrowly avoid a roundhouse kick from her nemesis. The momentum carried her over too far, however, and she slipped, landing with a yelp in the snow before the gleaming boots and the refined, viridian knees. She made as if to rise instantly, adrenaline coursing anew to parts of her body beginning to droop, but gagged when Shego's ankle caught her beneath the chin and sent her sprawling onto her back. Stars exploded behind her eyes; the world quivered dangerously, and her lungs screamed as a slender foot settled comfortably in the hollow of her throat.

_Shego's going to kill me_, Kim realized, and found herself more startled than afraid. Though she and the pale-skinned woman had fought many times before, often in close quarters and with the stakes leaping high, she'd never feared death by plasma bolt or boot to throat. Shego was malicious, power hungry, and a villain by every and all means—but she wasn't a murderer, and she seemed, on a regular basis, as interested in eradicating Kim Possible as she was in securing herself a white wedding with Ron Stoppable.

Dropping her jaw in an effort to suck in air, Kim writhed beneath the constricting boot, and Shego only pressed harder. Kim found herself staring up into endless emerald eyes, into a face over which a myriad of emotions were flickering—delight, hesitation, boredom. Disgust. Curling a dark lip, Shego tipped her head and muttered flatly, "Hurts, doesn't it?" She surveyed the girl beneath her, watching with feigned disinterest at Kim's lips began to tinge blue. The superhero's struggles were weakening, limbs made leaden by a lack of oxygen and hours upon hours of fatigue.

Kim bared her teeth and curled her hands over Shego's ankle, trying to dig her fingernails into skin through the fabric of the green- and black-patchworked uniform. It did little good; her nails scrabbled over the slick cloth, gaining no purchase, and Shego only smiled, voice dripping contempt when she spoke again.

"What happened to _Anything's possible for a Possible_, Kimmie?" she demanded. Her voice was like crushed velvet, caressing Kim's ears, suffocating her with its false sweetness and concern. The exploding lights behind Kim's eyes became fireworks; she felt tears of pain and fury streaming down her cheeks, crystallizing before they rolled away to hit the snow. She felt the softening slush working its way into the space between her shirt and pants; she felt mud squelch against her shoulderblades, and she opened her mouth to sob when Shego pressed the slightest bit more and snarled down at her, "FIGHT, POSSIBLE! Do you want to live or _not_?"

The fireworks, a million colors and so bright so bright so blindingly bright, began to roar with sound in her head, an angry buzzing not unlike the one that had come from the beehive in Ron's clubhouse one bygone summer. She could see the blood pounding in the veins behind her eyes, desperate, furious; she could hear the wardrums beating to the rhythm of her fierce heart, and she decided that yes, she _did _want to live. A scream tore itself free from Kim's harassed throat, and she fastened her hands around Shego's ankle all the more tightly, knuckles quivering and white, and jerked her arms so hard that her elbows crackled warningly. The motion was enough—she felt the villainess above her totter, balance lost, and sucked in sweet, sweet air as the boot slid from her collar, freeing her.

Taking advantage of regained oxygen, Kim rolled to the side and took to her feet again, whirling to face Shego with the wardrums still roaring in her ears. They circled one another in their ring of bruised snow, catlike, Shego's face shining in wicked delight and Kim's livid with rage, her eyes cracked and bleeding green and her slender fists clenching and unclenching in the open air on her either side.

"That's good, princess," Shego thrummed coaxingly, and Kim thought she detected a note of pride in the woman's voice. Summoning the telltale green glow to her fingertips, the villainess continued, "That's _very _good. Round two."

She made to lunge for Kim when, on the mountainside below them, the plane exploded.

Kim and Shego turned in tandem to watch the silver craft disappear in a roaring inferno of black smoke and billowing flames. Kim sobbed, "RON!" as her heart leapt in horror, hoping against all hope that her friend was out of range, that he and Rufus and the pilot weren't roasting alive in the blaze below, a whirling mass of red, orange, and umber against the bleak backdrop of white. She was tensing her calf muscles to run toward the remnants of the plane when Shego seized her wrist and spun her about, and the entire mountain shuddered beneath them.

Kim, eyes wide, gazed up toward the top of the mountain at the descending wall of white, a horrible rumbling monster that was coming for them with teeth made of splintered trees and eyes that were rays of sunlight bursting through the tumultuous mass. An avalanche intent on devouring them, on wiping the site of the plane crash from existence with a single sweep of a rumbling, starving belly. There was nowhere to run, and Kim knew it—and felt her spine stiffen as her entire body rebelled at the idea of dying beneath an ocean of seething snow.

Shego's hand tightened on her wrist, and quite abruptly the taller, paler woman jerked Kim to her side, wrapping one arm around the superhero's waist and holding the other up before the both of them at the advancing wall of snow like a shield. Kim felt the muscled curve of the other woman's side against her own through the suit, lean and harsh and just as unforgiving as Shego's marbled green eyes.

"If you want to live, Kimmie," Shego murmured, her purr audible over the progressing threat, "don't let go of me." And she lowered her hand for a quick moment to guide Kim's arms around her, giving the younger girl's fingers a squeeze to twine them together over her hip. Shego's glove, Kim thought with the faintest of shivers as the woman lifted the shielding limb again, was colder than the snow surrounding them.

Shego's glove flared with plasma as the crest of the avalanche hit them. Kim cried out, listening in a mix of terror and misplaced awe as the trees around them were torn from the soil and crushed under the weight of the waves of snow, watching as matter disintegrated the very instant it touched the plasma shield that flickered and blossomed and burned from Shego's hand. She clamped her arms reflexively about the other woman, so tightly that she could feel Shego's heartbeat hammering in desperation against the crook of her elbow. The pale-skinned villainess began to pant, gritting her teeth, struggling to keep the shield in place—and when she could do it no longer, the glove having burned itself into nothingness and her power stretched to its limit, Shego turned in to snow and crushed Kim Possible against her chest, hissing in the superhero's ear in the instant they had together before the avalanche engulfed them in a suffocating embrace of white,

"See you on the other side, princess. I'll hold you until we get there."

Kim Possible saw the tree over Shego's shoulder before it hit them. It was a giant dark shape that erupted from the snow, an omen of death, an umber orca in the sea of slush and mud and its splintered fellows, and it hit Shego with a crushing roar that was almost human. Kim heard Shego scream, and felt the older woman curve against and over her before the ground gave way beneath her feet. Something clipped her temple, and Kim Possible swung her head back dazedly to look up into Shego's face, holding the emerald gaze, holding her nemesis and letting her nemesis hold her in turn, until the world swallowed them in a swirl of depth and darkness.

—To Be Continued…

**Notes: **I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Any helpful critiques, comments, and fluffy hats are very much appreciated.

This story is dedicated first and foremost to my friend Lizzie, who pestered me about writing Kigo until I finally gave in and did so. Thank you, Lizzie. I hope you like it.


	2. Chapter Two:  A Sitch in Spine

**Warning: **This story will eventually be Kigo, and elements of said Kim/Shego goodness are present even in this chapter. If you don't like that sort of thing, please read no more. Also, me writing Kigo fanfiction doesn't necessarily mean I despise Ron Stoppable or any other characters in the show. This pairing just happens to be my favorite.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Kim Possible. Kim, Shego, Ron, Wade, Drakken, and all the rest are copyright to Disney, Bob Schooley, and Mark McCorkle.

**Stranded: A Sitch in Spine**

Kim Possible awoke with the slow, reluctant intent of one who has slept for a long time and wishes to continue to do so, shifting beneath her sheets and moaning when her comforter slid heavily over her chest. Despite the layers of bedding under which she was buried, she still felt cold; her hair brushed at her cheeks and lips, tendrils of icy thread, and her toes hummed with pins and needles of numbness. Feeling that her father, a humanoid penguin if there ever was one, must've gotten up in the middle of the night to adjust the thermostat in favor of cooler temperatures, Kim pursed her lips and rolled out of bed.

She barked her nose sharply on a solid rock wall and yelped at the rude scrape of pain that lanced up through her sinuses. A flailing arm brought similar results and torn knuckles, and she sat bolt upright with a hiss, blinking forward into almost complete darkness. Her breath wafted in faint clouds before her with every exhale, and her comforter slithered down her chest to pool in her lap, a lump of chilly, leaden cloth. She clung to it as she squinted and tried to make sense of her surroundings, attempted to seek out the familiar glowing numbers of her alarm clock, the outlines of her desk in the corner.

The events of the past few hours came surging back to her in the next instant, and her breath caught in her throat with remembrance. The tangled cobwebs of sleep were burned from her brain by the memories of surging snow, forest debris—of exploding airplanes and burning gloves and flickering green plasma, and trees that lurched and tore themselves from the soil and roared down mountainsides like great wooden dragons, snarling and spitting and destroying everything in their paths.

_See you on the other side, princess_, a phantom voice purred between her ears, dark and sinister and entirely familiar. And then, with attempted warmth and something else, something stifled beneath a green- and black-checked cloak of forced malice, _I'll hold you until we get there._

_Oh God, Shego, _Kim processed, and remembered the woman's arms tightening around her as they fell together into darkness. Curling her toes in her boots—for she was most definitely wearing boots, and this was most _definitely _not her room—the teen superhero made as if to stand, pushing the heavy lump on her lap onto the cold packed snow upon which she'd fallen, she guessed, some odd hours before.

The lump groaned.

"Shego!" Kim hissed, and immediately knelt again as relief flooded through her chest and throat, groping about in the darkness until she found a surface different from those of the snow and stone. Swallowing the suspicious lump between her collarbones that often meant the onset of tears, she tightened her fingers slightly and another groan, this one fainter than the first, greeted her ears—she was pinching an elbow, she realized, and let go with a faint sound of both apology and worry.

Drawing back entirely from Shego for a moment, Kim began to fumble with numb, stubborn fingers at the clasps of the chambers of her utility belt. Though most had been ripped away—the fall, she assumed—she found two still intact, one containing smelling salts and the other, a tiny glowstick which she snapped with the forcible press of a slender thumb. She shook it even as she leaned forward over her fallen nemesis, and to her immense relief, the plastic stick began to emit a faint blue glow that outlined the woman beneath her, a shredded and broken figure sprawled on the snow.

Kim focused on Shego's face first, taking in the woman's blackened eye and slightly parted lips, the latter tinged with crystallized bits of dark substance she suspected to be blood. She reached out with a hand that looked rather small in comparison to Shego's to brush the bruised cheek, to gently wipe the woman's lips and feel the pulse fluttering, erratic and agonized, beneath the elegant jaw. Mentally cursing, Kim moved the glowstick slowly down along the alabaster throat, noting with rising horror the shadowy marks peeking above the collar of Shego's rather ragged uniform—and the ominous puddle forming beneath her enemy's neck and shoulder, staining the snow an unidentifiable shade under the sickly blue light.

Fingers quivering, the girl reached for the zipper between the folds of the collar, dreading to see the damage she knew must lie beneath Shego's garments. Kim had been in tight situations before, of course, considering her career as a superhero. She knew how to splint limbs, how to fashion a tourniquet from a sleeve, and the basics of CPR, knowing that even the most meager knowledge could mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. She could do little, however, for internal injuries—Wade was her man there, radioing in for professional medical help when the situations became too much even for a Possible (and besides, her mother was the brain surgeon and her father the rocket scientist—Kim thought she was doing pretty good fighting crime well away from laboratories, surgical instruments, and microscopes).

The thought of Wade brought other ideas like lightning bolts into her head and, dropping the glowstick into the snow beside Shego's head, Kim reached into her ample pocket to paw about for the Kimmunicator. She found the familiar tool with ease and brought it out into the range of the glowstick's light with a soft hiss of triumph, only to find that the small machine was veritably flattened, small wires sticking out of the seams like locks of shining flyaway hair. The screen was a spiderweb of branching cracks, and Kim, disgusted with both herself and her breakable gear, tossed the useless piece of equipment off into the darkness. She heard it clatter, descending into oblivion, echoing all the way down, and felt an unwelcome spike of fear force its way up through her abdomen and spine.

She and Shego were lying on a ledge of some sort. Just a few feet away, Kim realized, there was a sudden drop and emptiness, a chasm into which her Kimmunicator was still plummeting, lost to sight (and almost to sound) forever. Seizing the glowstick and temporarily leaving Shego alone, awash in snow and shadows, Kim extended her arm as far as it would go in the direction opposite the rock wall against which they were pressed, brandishing her only source of light as though it were a torch. If she squinted, she could only just make out the edge of their ledge, a small, snow-ringed ridge that ended both abruptly and without even the slightest slope of warning.

A small expanse of snow separated Kim Possible and Shego from an abysmal gulf of darkness.

"Perfect," muttered the girl, ignoring the feelings of anxiety worming around in her gut. Now wasn't the time, much less the place, to panic, and with a soft sniff of determination, Kim turned back to Shego and folded her fingers around the woman's zipper, glinting in the faint luminosity of the glowstick.

"Oooh, naughty Kimmie," came the rattling purr from the shadows near Shego's head. Kim muffled a shriek and whirled in the snow, thrusting the glowstick forward with indignance and humiliation until she could see her nemesis's face: good eye slanted open, lashes quivering; lips still parted, but curled upward into a lecherous sneer; eyebrows lifted, twin lines of deep green stained by idle flecks of snow. "Go on then," Shego coaxed, and gave her eyebrows a wriggle. "Unzip me, princess. I won't mind."

Kim immediately regretted feeling worried about the villainess. Grimacing, she tucked the hand with which she had been intending to unzip Shego's suit behind her back and informed the older woman, rolling her eyes, absolutely positive she must've hallucinated their twined fall, "_So _gross."

"Really?" Shego smirked and closed her eye again, turning the swollen side of her face into the snow. After moaning faintly, she looked up at Kim, squinted, and asked in a low, teasing rumble, "Then why are you blushing?"

The teen superhero lifted her hands to run her palms over her cheeks and, to her horror, found them quite hot indeed. "I'm not blushing," she lied. "It's cold. And I spent all night running around in the wind—away from _you, _thank you _so _much. They're chapped, that's all."

"Sure, princess," Shego taunted, but fell silent as she dug her hand into the snow. Crunching together an ample fistful of the stuff, she pressed it to her cheek and sighed expansively, altogether silent. Altogether still. Altogether not, marveled Kim, attempting to attack her.

"So," asked the villainess after a moment of companionable quiet, "where are we? I thought we'd be dead, but since I don't see any cute chubby cherubs with wings and halos, thank God"—and she winced, adjusting her makeshift icepack with a twitch of fingers—"or any roaring flames, I'm going to assume we're both still very much in the land of the living."

Kim answered Shego's musing with a nod, then thought quickly about how she was going to reply to the woman's real question. Tucking her soggy hair behind her ear, she relayed her guess to Shego. "I'm going to assume," she began, "that we were fighting on a giant windfall—a huge mass of trees, snow, packed earth—"

"Yes, Kimmie, I know what a windfall is," Shego grouched, but at Kim's stubborn glare, gave a wave of her hand to indicate she was still listening.

Inwardly smoothing the indignant retort that rose in her throat into a quiet cough, Kim continued, "…if we were fighting on a windfall, the avalanche loosened the ground enough to dislodge everything. We fell through into this place, which has all the makings of a cave system or a ravine. It _does _make sense," she murmured, more to herself than to Shego, "that a windfall would form over a ravine."

"Mm," Shego thrummed, and Kim wondered if the woman was agreeing, disagreeing, or just didn't give a damn. Turning her head slowly to gaze off into the darkness, the villain considered and asked quietly, "Have you tried looking around at all?"

"Just over there," Kim answered, and pointed her trusty glowstick toward the end of the ledge. "Long way down."

"Of course it is. How about your spiffy little gadget? Did you call for help?"

Kim cocked her head and tried her best to examine her nemesis in the wan light of the glowstick. She thought she heard hope, of all things, in Shego's voice, and Shego hadn't ever seemed like the type of person who would willingly call for help—especially not in this sort of situation.

_Maybe she's claustrophobic_, thought Kim, and shuddered. _Heaven knows I don't want to be stuck down here for very long either._

"I would've called Wade," she told the woman aloud, watching the opposing face carefully, "but my communicator broke in the fall. And I, err…" She trailed off and glanced over toward the edge of the ledge somewhat guiltily. Though she was positive the Kimmunicator wouldn't've been any help to their cause, she still regretted throwing it away. It hadn't failed her often before now.

"Kimmie's got a temper," Shego observed, her tone bemused. Kim thought her voice sounded weak, but the villainess made no mention of her injuries, reaching instead with her other hand to fumble quietly with the zipper between the folds of her collar. Pulling it down just enough to expose an expanse of alabaster skin mottled with cruel bruises, Shego dipped her fingers into the top piece of her suit and fished about, biting her lips from the inside. Kim politely looked away, thinking it was best not to aggravate the woman if at all possible—considering their situation, Kim couldn't afford to have Shego at her throat. Not if she wanted to survive.

"Damn!" Shego hissed after a moment, and came up with a handful of glittering metal fragments. She flung them off to the side in a motion painfully similar, Kim thought, to her own with the Kimmunicator; the look the villainess gave the teen was almost sorry, so wry and bitter it made her face. "Looks like my technology didn't do any better. Not that I want Dr. D," she growled, "to see me like this. Near you."

Kim found the words both biting and insulting, and she told Shego with narrowed eyes, "It was your choice, Shego. You're the one that yanked me down here with you!"

"And you've fallen all over yourself thanking me for that, I see," Shego returned dryly. "I saved your life, pumpkin."

"I _am _thankful," Kim assured the woman before she could stop herself. Her cheeks burned. "You just don't seem to be happy about your decision," she offered after a lengthy pause, and directed her gaze intently back to the woman's face.

Shego lifted a lip to expose a canine, and Kim was startled to find that her nemesis's mouth was full of blood. Swallowing with a grimace of distaste, the villainess returned simply and with apparently little patience, "You're worth saving. Now, go over there"—she pointed down the ledge over Kim's shoulder and her own booted feet, this time with the hand rendered gloveless by far too much plasma concentration—"and see just how far this ledge extends. Keep your eyes open for caves or sunlight." Shego closed her eyes, lowering her arm to curl it over her waist. "We have to find a way out of here."

"Duh," Kim murmured without her usual vehemence. She eyed Shego in concern, her gaze flitting to the bruises at the woman's collar and the fresh flecks of blood gleaming on the dark lips. "Shego?" she chanced. "What's wrong? What hurts?"

"That doesn't _matter _right now!" the woman snarled, opening her good eye and reaching up with all the quickness of a viper to seize the front Kim's shirt. The teen felt Shego's nails even through the thermal cloth, perfectly filed and deadly and somewhat hot, press insistently into her skin. Her visible green orb gleamed, a ring of furious green in the darkness.

Kim heard it then without having to really listen for it—the sound of desperation and urgency in Shego's voice, a frightening couple for the fact that, well, it made Shego sound _scared_. In previous battles, in situations where buildings were falling down around them and bullets from SWAT teams were flying and all hell was breaking loose, Shego had looked worried, sure, and occasionally even got the 'oh-no-my-ass-is-about-to-be-scraped-off' expression on her face, but Kim was hard pressed to recall a time at which Shego had exhibited fear. Staring down at the woman, she jerked her hands into her lap and blinked and wondered just what was bothering the woman so much to have to hear such a noise coming from her: to have to hear a panther whimper rather than roar.

Perhaps taking Kim's movement to be an unwillingness to cooperate, Shego softened her voice somewhat and reminded the superhero, "You're wasting time and air if we're sealed in here. Go do what I said." And then, to Kim's horror and incredible startlement, she grated out a rather unconvincing, "_Please_."

She released the girl as Kim rocked back on her heels and, after a few seconds, gained her feet, looking down at Shego's sprawled form with wide eyes. Deciding that it was best to say nothing in order to give herself time to stomach the phenomenon of Shego being polite, she set off carefully down the ledge. She kept her hands pressed to the rock wall lest the snow beneath her give way to darkness, feeling out every inch with questing taps of the toes and ankles; her hair swung against and clung to the back of her neck, irritatingly wet and beginning to freeze under the influence of the frigid temperatures.

_I can't believe she's being civil to me. Either I hit my head really hard on the way down, or she hit hers, or this whole thing is a miserable dream. _Kim allowed herself a quiet curse of, "Crackers!" when her hair caught in the rough crevices of the rock wall and pulled. Biting her lips, she dragged her fingers through the uncooperative mass and found, to her dismay, that she'd lost her scrunchie at some point. _So not a dream,_ she admitted in sadness, and continued on her way.

She could hear shuffling in the darkness behind her interspersed with cursing that made the tips of her ears heat, and knew Shego must be moving around. Drawing a deep breath of icy air, Kim exhaled in a cough and held the glowstick resolutely forward. It was slow going, moving along the ledge—more than once she felt the snow beneath her give and heard it crunch, and she froze in her place, her hands on the wall again and her jaw clenched in agonizing hesitation. Kim thought that seconds must be turning into hours: her fingers were so cold, so stiff, she worried that she was going to push with them too hard and have to deal with them breaking off, icicles of flesh and blood and perfect fingernails.

All sense of time distorted, Kim was beginning to consider turning around when her hand went from the rock wall to a sudden curve and prompt empty space. She paused, groping about in the air for a solid surface, and grinned when she found none. She shifted the glowstick to her exploring hand and nudged it slowly into the open space, hope flooding her mouth with a clean minty taste when the opening of a cave, wider around than the jet in which she'd been brought here and twice as high as her, became visible under her light source's dim illumination. Holding her breath, Kim flexed her hand until it felt moderately human again, then held it out before the gaping hole in the rock wall, fingers splayed, palm turned inward.

After a moment spent in anguish, Kim felt it: the breath of the mountain, the brush of life and beauty and cold, clean _air _against her fingertips. Salvation! A way out! Closing the hand into a fist to give it a celebratory pump, Kim turned on the ledge and scuttled back the way, crablike, from whence she'd come, using every bit of her skill as a martial artist to ensure she didn't mistakenly vault over the ledge into the endless gloom below.

Shego came into her sights again after a few moments, outlined by the flickering glow from the small bit of plasma she had playing about her gloved fingertips. Kim noticed with relief that the woman had managed to sit up and prop herself against the rock wall, her legs still splayed out in front of her and her free arm tucked tightly about her waist. Shego's head was tipped back, her eyes trained on the blackness not below but above them—Kim looked up as well and saw nothing but a vaulted, solid ceiling of tree trunks, ice, and snow, a lid on their jar, trapping them inside. Lowering her gaze again, Kim took time to note that their ledge ended about ten feet beyond Shego's crooked form, the teen superhero curled her fingers all the more tightly about her glowstick in silent relief. Only a few more feet and they would've never landed on the ledge, lost forever to the belly of the mountain.

Kim moved close to her nemesis and tried to ignore the trail of mixed blood and snow the woman had left behind in her movements, stepping over it with tight lips and a soft swallow. Shego's eye flickered to her, a waning emerald—managing a grin, the villainess blew on her fingertips to extinguish the candles of plasma and asked quietly, "What did you find?"

"A cave," responded Kim, and amended directly, "a tunnel, actually. I could feel air moving down. I think if there's a way out of here, that's it."

Shego nodded. Kim could only faintly see her head bobbing in the darkness, a pale shape surrounded by lush curves of inky hair. "You didn't disappoint, princess. Very good." Kim felt like a dog being praised, but said nothing when Shego continued, "I'm glad you found it. How far is it? I could hear you breathing the whole way, so it must not be that bad."

Kim flushed. She knew she was well-versed in stealth tactics, but she hadn't been thinking about subterfuge while exploring the ledge. It was only natural that Shego, keen-eared as she was, would've noticed her progress. "I'm not sure," she found herself admitting. "It seemed like it took forever."

Shego nodded again. "You were careful," she said. After a pause, she murmured for the second time within only a few minutes, "I'm glad. I don't think I'd be very pleased if you decided to up and die now, since I took time out of my day to save your ass."

"I thought you said it was worth it," Kim observed, unable to keep the smirk from her features. She yelped indignantly, however, when she felt fingers detach themselves from the darkness to lovingly caress the curve of a buttock, retreating with a soft, teasing pinch.

_Her _buttock. _Shego's _fingers.

Shego tipped her a rather lopsided wink and purred, "Oh it _is_, princess. It's such a lovely ass."

"_Shego_!" Kim blasphemed in what she hoped was her most horrified tone of voice.

It only seemed to encourage her nemesis. "Nnn-yes? What is it, pumpkin? Would you like me to do it again?" Shego lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers enticingly in front of Kim's nose, and the superhero drew back with a soft hiss of disgust.

"In your dreams, Shego."

"You know it." Shego leered at Kim before she settled back again, tucking her ungloved hand into the crease between her arm and body. She didn't seem to be very intent on moving; her posture was that of a mortally wounded warrior slumped on a battlefield, Kim thought, recalling scenes from the rather gruesome movies Mr. Barken had entertained her American History class with over the past semester. Shego looked like she was waiting to die.

Kim frowned. As far as she was concerned, Shego was part of her team now, a necessary piece of her defense against the fear and the cold and the looming threat of dying, dying down here in the dark—a team of none but two. Kim wasn't going to lose a member of Team Possible, even if that member happened to be Shego. Reaching out willingly for the first time she could ever recall to rest her hands on the arm of the villainess, Kim cleared her throat and murmured in her kindest, most encouraging voice, "C'mon, Shego. We need to get you up on your feet and walking so we can get out of here. We can't just sit—we'll freeze to death."

"Mm," said Shego. The word wobbled—Kim was certain she could hear the start of tears behind it. "Wonderful. I've always fancied being a meat popsicle."

Slanting her eyes in irritation and rising worry that was almost suffocating, Kim informed the villainess, "We don't have time for this. You said so yourself, Shego. Stop joking around and get u—"

"I _can't_!" snarled Shego with such vehemence that Kim didn't even bother opening her mouth to argue, such a vicious retort and entirely honest to boot. Arm quivering beneath the teen's hands, Shego bared her teeth up at Kim and growled, voice wobbling again, good eye thinly streaming tears, "I'm useless. I'm stuck here—right _here_."

The words were echoing in the stone chamber around them, reverberating off the walls, drawing ever higher the sense of dread pooling in Kim's chest. And she could do nothing but stare in abject horror at her nemesis when Shego finished in a miserable, disgusted sob, "I'm not going to move, no matter how much you want me to, no matter how much _I _want me to—because I can't feel my _legs_, Possible!"

—To Be Continued…

**Notes: **Oooh, things are getting problematic! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Any helpful critiques, comments, and fluffy hats are very much appreciated.

This story is dedicated first and foremost to my friend Lizzie, who pestered me about writing Kigo until I finally gave in and did so. Thank you, Lizzie. I hope you like it.


	3. Chapter Three:  Descent into Darkness

**Warning: **This story will eventually be Kigo, and elements of said Kim/Shego goodness are present even in this chapter. If you don't like that sort of thing, please read no more. Also, me writing Kigo fanfiction doesn't necessarily mean I despise Ron Stoppable or any other characters in the show. This pairing just happens to be my favorite.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Kim Possible. Kim, Shego, Ron, Wade, Drakken, and all the rest are copyright to Disney, Bob Schooley, and Mark McCorkle.

**Stranded: Descent into Darkness**

Kim Possible closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and weighed her options.

Leaving Shego here in this blocked and damning ravine, she decided immediately, was not something she could ever consider. Ruling that out with vehemence, Kim brooded about her remaining choices, none of which were very appealing. She could always wait things out with Shego: she could stay here too, huddled on the ledge next to her nemesis, and hope for the best.

_But what good would that do? _she agonized, biting her lips from the inside. _We'd both freeze to death within hours. Shego might be able to keep us warm with her plasma for a little while, but that'll give out soon and she doesn't need to be using the energy._

And then there was the matter of the cave.

_That's the only way out. _Kim was convinced of this. Curling her hands over Shego's arm, the teen superhero meditated on the mental images she had of the cave: wide, high, and with the promise of clean air, it seemed their best option for survival. Kim could only hope it went all the way to the surface of the mountainside. She listened to Shego's relenting, half-sobbed breaths, absently stroking the other woman's arm with the tips of her fingernails, and heard her mother's voice rise into stern relief in her head.

_Spinal cord injuries don't heal easily, Kimmie. And they often come with a variety of nerve-wracking symptoms, if you'll pardon the pun: temperature irregularities, shock, incontinence, paralysis_... _And usually, the damage is only worsened by the victims trying to move after they've been injured. I've operated on plenty of people with a mix of brain and spinal damage. The brain can bounce back. If one area's injured, the others attempt to compensate. The spine… well, it usually can't do that. You and Ron be careful out there, okay?_

She remembered her mother's expression of panic when one of the Tweebs—Kim couldn't honestly remember if it had been Jim or Tim—had sproinged right off the family trampoline and onto his back in the yard, setting up a wail fit to raise the dead. She remembered her mother's usually smooth brow crease with lines; remembered the cool gaze snap and crackle and _burn _with fear; remembered her snarling shriek of, "Don't MOVE!" But the Tweeb had been okay, yes, after a trip to the hospital and many x-rays and even a grape-flavored lollipop. Having rarely seen her mother come so close to losing her cool, Kim recalled every instance of the experience as though it had been etched into her mind with the very fine point of a scalpel.

_Shego's already moved. Not good. _Kim rubbed her forehead, feeling a spike of worry for the woman she had, up until now, considered her most formidable enemy._ I shouldn't worsen the injury by dragging her around through an underground cave system, but if I don't, I might as well be signing her death warrant._

Shego shifted in the darkness in front of her, rubbing her bare hand with the one still covered. Kim looked down at the appendage in idle curiosity, realizing that this was one of the few times she'd ever managed to catch a glimpse of her nemesis without a glove. Shego's hand was just as milky-pale as the rest of her, nails manicured to perfection, fingers long and graceful and deceptively pretty. Before she was really aware of what she was doing, Kim had taken the hand and was rubbing it between her own, trying to urge warmth back into the slender, icy palm.

The villainess gave the limb a weak tug but didn't really seem interested in pulling it away, narrowing her eyes at Kim. "What are you doing?"

"Thinking," Kim responded promptly. _At least she doesn't sound like she's going to cry anymore_, she thought in relief. Shego and tears just didn't mix.

"With my _hand_, princess."

"Oh." Kim looked down at the woman's fingers, then smiled and shrugged. "Warming you up, I guess." Her brain snapped almost immediately back to the situation at hand. "Shego, do you have anything in your suit we can use? Any food—_anything_?"

Shego frowned. Twining her hand firmly in Kim's—the hand she'd used to level buildings, throw cars, and wreak general havoc—the villainess both anchored and pulled herself forward away from the rock wall upon which she was propped, and managed through gritted teeth, "There's a pack with some traveling stuff sewn into the lining of my suit. I can't remember all of what I put in there. You'll have to get it out and look." Reaching up with her free hand, Shego unzipped the black-and-green uniform and began to gingerly peel it away.

Kim helped her, keeping her arm tensed at the elbow so Shego wouldn't fall back again and hurt herself. She bit her lip as the uniform came away from the slender shoulders, revealing bruises aplenty and, to her horror, an expanse of mottled pale skin made slick and crimson by fresh blood. With an expert wriggle of her upper body, Shego shed the uniform down to her waist, switching handholds on Kim's arms as she did so to wrestle away the sleeves. The teen superhero, letting the villainess hold her for bracing as she needed, looked upon the deep gouges along Shego's spine and shoulders and felt, for the first time in her life, as though she truly couldn't handle a situation. Not this, not down here in the cold, in the darkness and the neverending stillness, in the fathomless gloom of the mountain.

The wounds near the small of the woman's back were deep enough to expose taut lines of quivering red tissue and, here and there, the telltale chilling white of bone. Kim Possible looked down the line of Shego's spine and at the grievous injuries and felt the bitter, acidic taste of bile touch the back of her tongue. Working desperately to control her gag reflex, the red-haired teen closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and leaned slightly around Shego's hip to dislodge the lining from the top piece of the woman's suit. As promised, it felt bulky and came away with a few delicate tugs, and Kim pulled free a creased silver package no longer than her forearm and slighter in width than an empty manila folder.

Kim placed the package on her knees and set about helping Shego fasten the lining back in place and tuck her arms into the top half of her suit once more, her gaze quiet, resolute. Only when Shego was as comfortable as possible again did Kim shift her eyes to the package in her lip, her hands hovering hopefully over the crinkled edges.

Shego pointed with her bare hand to the package. "Pull really hard on that seam." Kim obeyed, blinking curiously as the package broke open, spilling its contents onto the snow. Three vials of black, sinister liquid, a cluster of darts, a pocketknife, a spare pair of gloves, and a tiny square of beige material fell into a lump before Kim's knees, followed closely by a twin set of granola bars and a small packet of SweetTarts.

Lifting her eyebrows, Kim picked up the last item and examined it with a smile. "I didn't know you liked candy, Shego."

Shego made a soft rumbling sound and shrugged, rifling through the meager contents of the packet. "Dr. D keeps them in a bowl on the kitchen counter," she murmured distractedly. "For the minions and all. I'm only human, princess—of course I like candy."

Settling the SweetTarts back on the snow, Kim ran her fingers in puzzlement over the three black vials and offered thoughtfully, "Mmm. What's in these? And what is this?" She pinched the square of beige material and flipped it over into her free hand, weighing it with a surprised exhale. It felt heavier than it looked, coarse and cross-hatched all over—it reminded Kim of a condensed tarp or perhaps, she thought, nylon fabric.

"Potent sleeping drug in the vials," Shego answered, "and it's for the darts, though I'm sure you gathered that." She smiled somewhat maliciously—though the expression didn't quite reach her eyes, Kim noted. "Handy for stubborn enemies that just won't stop running down mountainsides all night. You're lucky it was dark."

Kim nodded, brandishing the square again to remind the villainess. "And this?"

"Parachute."

"_What_?" Kim muttered incredulously. She turned the tiny square over in her hands. There was just no _way_…

Shego smirked and crooked her fingers to indicate she wanted the square. Kim handed it over obligingly, watching in high interest as Shego ran a thumb along the edge of the rough little package and, after digging into the fabric with her nails, came up with what was unmistakably a drawstring. "Move," she ordered the superhero, and Kim gathered the other items from the silver packet before skittering over to sit at Shego's side. The tiny square in Shego's fingers exploded the moment the villainess pulled the drawstring, a sudden eruption of billowing beige folds and strings and straps, none any wider that Kim's ring finger—none that looked as though they could actually keep a person aloft for any amount of time.

Leaning forward with a wince to collect a handful of the parachute's material, Shego showed the crosshatched stuff to Kim and explained, "You see how it looks like a bunch of squares? Each one is an air cell. Good for snagging thermals and other rising currents—the material's super thin and not smooth inside like a normal windcatch, obviously, so it compensates for not developing a single giant air pocket beneath the parachute by creating millions of tiny ones. More surface area. Quieter, easier descent."

Kim frowned, feeling the material curiously. "Is it strong?"

"As much as any normal parachute."

"And the straps? They look really thin."

"Way to state the obvious, Kimmie." Shego snorted and flexed her fingers in the material, easing slowly back against the wall until she seemed to meld with it, a mix of green, black, and slate shadows in the light of the glowstick. "They're made of some sort of incredibly durable hybrid material—you'd have to ask Dr. D," the villainess continued tightly. "I'm sure he'd gladly rave about it to you. He explained it to me too, but I stopped listening after he dropped in a claim about his, ah, imperial magnificence." She waved a hand somewhat weakly. "Regardless, yeah. They're strong."

Mulling quickly over the supplies at hand and their possible uses, Kim tipped her head and said at last, "We can use the parachute." She nudged over one of the granola bars, tucking the black vials into one of the remaining chambers of her utility belt after moving aside the smelling salts. "You should eat that. You need energy—and I need your plasma."

Shego made an inquiring, suspicious noise as she plucked the spare pair of gloves from Kim's hands and donned one of the set, wriggling her fingers with evident relief. "Oh? Why?"

Taking a deep breath and deciding that now was as good a time as any to voice her plan, Kim informed her nemesis simply, "I'm going to need you to melt some of the edges of the parachute together so I can make a sled for you." Swallowing, she went on in a rush, "There's no other way out but the tunnel I found. I don't want to move you, but it's either that or leave you here to die, and I want that even less, Shego."

There was a measured silence from the other woman, one that seemed to stretch and expand and go on forever between them. Kim dug her fingers into her knees until her skin screamed protest and prayed that Shego wouldn't argue too much. And there were worse, more agonizing things to consider: what if Shego was afraid of moving? Of losing her legs forever? Of going into the cave? What if she preferred death over darkness and immobility?

When Shego spoke at last, her words were almost a snarl and her voice cracked with a mix of disgust and incredulity. "You want to _drag _me out of here?" Her visible eye snapped and glowed like a sparkler on Independence Day, a green firecracker of righteous indignation and cold, crackling fury.

"It's not something I've fantasized about, I'll admit," Kim confessed irritably, "but wrapping you up like a giant sushi roll in the parachute is the best chance you've got. If we sit here waiting for a search party or something—"

"I didn't intend," Shego spat, lip curled, "for you to stay here with me!"

Feeling her cheeks flush with anger rather than embarrassment, Kim leaned forward and took Shego's chin between her forefinger and thumb. She saw Shego's newly-donned glove burst into faint flame at the fingertips, saw the fist clench—saw Shego's jaw tighten with the restrained urge to fight back against her. Rage doing a jig behind her eyes so fiercely that she could hear the blood roaring in her ears, Kim hissed explosively at her nemesis, "I am not leaving you here to die! I don't _want _you dead. And you obviously don't want me dead either," she continued, tightening her grip on Shego's slender chin, "or you wouldn't've done what you did on the slope up there."

Shego glared at Kim through her good eye, face still cast in a stubborn set—but she was, at least, keeping silent, listening to the girl. Closing her eyes, the teen superhero took a deep breath and murmured, taking steps on her pride as she did so, "The likelihood of me getting out of the cave without you isn't high. My glowstick will run out soon"—Kim gave the little plastic torch a small wave—"and if I happen to find heavy blockages in the tunnel, the only way I'm going to be able to get around them is with your plasma." Pausing, Kim opened her eyes again to gaze at her nemesis and found a peculiar expression on Shego's face: a kind of muffled awe complete with arched brows, quirked lips, wide eye. Hurrying onward before her pride flared again, Kim managed quietly, "I can't do it alone. I need you."

Shego frowned, studying Kim intently. Cocking her head as much as she was able with her chin still in the red-headed teen's grasp, the woman murmured at last, "I don't think I've ever heard you submit to anyone before, Kimmie." She smiled and pumped one of her eyebrows suggestively. "If this is always how you're going to talk to me in close quarters, count me in."

Kim refrained from celebrating her victory of winning over Shego in favor of producing an indignant, surprised squeak. Releasing the other woman, she backed away from Shego quickly and turned to begin to collect the parachute to her, hoping fervently that the darkness was at least hiding her burning face.

"Kimmie?" asked Shego after a long moment. Lifting her head to indicate that she was listening, Kim murmured softly and blinked as Shego persisted, "Do you have anything in your pockets?"

Kim blinked again, then slowly dug her hands into her pockets to search them more thoroughly than before. She came up with two handfuls of twigs and pebbles when she fished through the ones at her hips; a small shard of her Kimmunicator's screen was lurking at the bottom of her left pocket and gleefully gave her a sharp prick. Gritting her teeth, Kim patted her back pockets and found, to her surprise, a lump in one of them. She seized upon it eagerly and found, to her instant disappointment, a tube of lipstick and the sad remnants of a package of airline peanuts.

She presented her findings to Shego, who took both to examine them. "Splendid," she grouched. "Mushy peanuts. My favorite."

"And crushed granola is _so _much better."

"Better than peanut butter without the butter, princess. Blech! It even _feels _gross." Shego paused, and Kim heard her uncork the tube of lipstick. Seconds later the villainess informed her simply, "And this shade of lipstick really doesn't suit you."

Kim turned, folding the parachute in absent occupation, to see Shego critically evaluating the contents of the lipstick tube. She agreed immediately with her nemesis that the color was far too dark for her—and it was that which brought to memory the tube's use, quite far from cosmetic. Smiling, she shrugged and replied in a smooth voice, "That's because it doesn't go on my lips."

Shego looked up at her, brows piqued. "Then where does it go?"

"On locks and doors. It's a dissolving agent. Works on most substances—including skin. I wouldn't touch it if I were you."

Shego proceeded to don an expression of interest and turned gingerly, curious, to press the very tip of the lipstick to the rock wall near her shoulder. At the resulting sizzle and sudden divot in the wall, she grinned fiercely and murmured, her voice holding a touch of longing, "Wish Dr. D would think to make me stuff like this. Would've been useful in Italy last week…"

Kim snorted, trying not to sound too derisive. "Is anything he ever makes useful?"

"Not really," Shego allowed, and followed up after a few seconds with, "unless you count that parachute. And he's a pretty good cook."

"You don't cook for him?" Kim asked, half in curiosity and half to have something to keep her mind off the cold, a spreading entity which was beginning to ooze through her limbs, a plague of aching pins and needles. Her fingers, stiff and frigid, only obeyed her brain's commands every now and then. It made folding the parachute a chore in itself. Her ankles and hips were chafing, snow having clung to and melted behind her utility belt and in the cuffs of her pants; she was certain the hairs on her arms were perpetually frozen standing up, and that she would have goosebumps forever. Her breath steamed in the air in front of her, puffs of vaporous white substance that drifted up to make her nostrils hurt.

"As if," Shego murmured quietly. "I can't cook."

The dry, blatant admission startled Kim. Folding the last section of the parachute with an effort, straps facing out and up so she could loop them about her shoulders when the time came, the teen superhero squinted at her nemesis in the darkness. "I can't either," she found herself telling Shego. "Ron tried to help me once, and it worked for a while—long enough to get me out of Home Economics with a passing grade, at least. I still manage to burn water."

"Perfect Kim Possible can't cook?" Shego sounded tiredly amused. "I fear for your future children. They'll be raised on a microwave lasagna diet the moment they're off the bottle."

"Microwave lasagna has its perks, y'know," Kim murmured. Settling the parachute carefully back down on the snow, she turned her full attention to Shego. Anxiety bounced in her stomach with more vigor than the Tweebs on a chocolate high, and she bit the inside of her cheek before she said to the woman, "I'm going to have to move you from there onto the parachute. Which means picking you up. And I'm strong, Shego, but I'm not _that _strong…" She trailed off, sawing her lower lip between her teeth.

"You're warning me that you might drop me, ruin me for life, put me through agonizing pain, yadda yadda." Shego's voice went deadpan and somewhat wobbly once more, but she waved a hand impatiently and continued, "I'm already like this because of you, and if I really wanted to blame you for it, you'd be a pile of mush in the snow. Just hurry up, Kimmie. Get it _over with_."

Kim ignored the lump of guilt that rose in her throat and slipped forward without a word to wrap her arms around Shego's shoulders. She'd never hugged her nemesis before, not willingly, and she now fully understood why: Shego gave off an aura of being about as huggable as a cat with its tail caught in a light socket. She felt the woman stiffen and heard her hiss of pain, and she ignored those too, tucking her face into her enemy's lush black hair to murmur quietly, lips quivering, "I'm sorry, Shego."

Kim felt blindsided by the remorse and the grief and the self-rebuke twining and twisting within her, tormenting her soul and wounding her morality without the slightest shred of mercy. Tears welled in and pricked at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over into the raven expanse beneath her cheek; she turned her head, shaking it softly, trying to clear it of the ringing sirens of blame, trying to keep herself from hearing the soft echo of _My fault, my fault, my fault _ringing with such persistence between her ears.

She was preparing to draw back when the woman gingerly curled her arms about Kim and allowed in a softly chiding voice, "Remember, Kimmie—you're worth it. It's all right." The woman turned her head, brushing cheeks with Kim in a chaste motion of comfort. Shego's pale skin was like ice. "I wouldn't've said it earlier if I didn't mean it. Now." Kim felt the pseudo-embrace tighten as Shego laced her fingers between her shoulderblades. "Get on with it, pumpkin, before we both lose our nerve."

Kim steeled herself and shifted her arms slightly, using the crook of her elbow to brace Shego's neck as she gently turned the woman away from the wall. Shego gasped, uninjured eye widening, and tightened her fingers all the more; Kim could feel Shego's torso going rigid against her own. Possessed by the desire to complete the task at hand as quickly as possible for Shego's sake if nothing else, Kim nudged her enemy's legs together with her other elbow, looped an arm beneath her thighs, and heaved the woman upright bridal style. She lifted with her knees and wobbled despite it all, feeling the influence of the cold in her sluggish limbs, in her very blood, pounding and drumming and crying out and oh Shego was just so _heavy_, and then the woman in her arms screamed.

It was a sudden, startled sound, one that clawed its way unbidden from Shego's throat and into the world around them, wretched and harsh and miserable, the absolute voice of agony. Shego's fingers came undone; the villainess, scream ending in a suffering sob, raked one hand down Kim's back and side, fingers scrabbling for purchase, nails biting into skin even through the gloves. Kim cried out too but, clenching her jaw, spun on her heel and took the three small steps to the parachute, kneeling to rest Shego in the center of her folded creation.

Fingers twitching and buried in the fabric and skin just above Kim's hip, Shego refused to let the teen go. She wheezed, visible eye glazed over in the darkness; her other hand hung uselessly at her side, and Kim could see the limb spasming faintly from the elbow all the way down to the fingertips. _Nerve damage, _a mean little part of her mind whispered. She crushed the whisper with a mental boot and began to slowly, slowly ease Shego into a horizontal position on the parachute, murmuring soothingly to her nemesis as she did so, "Almost done—it's almost over…"

Shego responded by grating out a word truly unfit for human ears, and Kim, in the discretion of her own mind, felt a stab of encouragement and relief. A cursing Shego was a breathing Shego.

She managed to get Shego entirely horizontal and smiled down at the woman when the task was done, trying her best not to notice that one of her arms was covered in a warm rush of blood and that the other was aching from Shego's inflicted clawmarks. Eye glazed a rather marbled green, the woman gazed up at Kim and panted softly, lips parted and tinged an alarming lavender. "Didn't feel very nice," she managed at last. Her voice came out gravelly and wet, and Kim winced without really meaning to do so, shifting her arm with delicate, almost operative precision from beneath her enemy's neck.

"It's over," she encouraged Shego quietly. "All you have to do now is seal these seams so you don't slide out when I start to pull"—_Drag_, hissed the nasty little whisper in her head—"you." Kim lifted one of the carefully arranged folds, her eyes on the woman's pale face. "Do you feel up to it?"

Shego gave a weak chuckle and reached up to run a finger along the indicated line. She melted the separate folds of fabric together in a tiny flash of green light and a pungent sizzle of nylon, then curled her hand and let it flop limply over one of Kim's knees. Looking both disgusted with herself and amused at the entire predicament, the villainess looked up and notified Kim, "You're going to have to guide my hand to the rest."

"Why?" Kim asked worriedly even as she curled her fingers around Shego's wrist. Her skin rejoiced—the glove was warm from recent expulsion of plasma. "Can you not feel this now either?"

Shego inclined her head the tiniest bit to indicate Kim was wrong. "Far from it, princess," she murmured. Kim watched as she closed her eye and settled back, her skull forming a divot in the snow through the parachute, and smiled, a quiet expression completely lacking in malice.

_I knew it, _Kim thought with confidence, gazing down at Shego's angular face. Her lips curved easily into a mirroring expression. _I knew a nice smile would make her beautiful._

"I want to enjoy your touch as long as I can," Shego murmured. She sounded sleepy, distant, and Kim disregarded the idea of blushing to lean forward to make sure her nemesis was still breathing. Shego proved to be quite alive and well, lips twitching as Kim's shadow fell over her. "Ready when you are, Kimmie." The muscles in her wrist jumped as she flexed her fingers.

For the next five minutes or so Kim drew Shego's hand carefully over the folds that needed to be merged, murmuring to signal when she needed heat and giving the wrist in her grasp a faint press when she needed none. Shego said nothing during the entire exchange, and when Kim stated at length in soft exultation, "That's the last one!" the villainess merely exhaled thinly and went still, her hand entirely limp in Kim's. Sliding her fingers down to Shego's pulsepoint, Kim counted the beats beneath the glove until she was satisfied that her nemesis wasn't dying on her, then tucked the limb into the cocoon-like shape of the altered parachute and set about collecting their supplies.

She retrieved everything down to the last mushy peanut for fear of leaving behind something they might need in the tunnel, and was about to return to Shego's side when a dark shape in the snow near the rock wall caught her eye. Tucking one of the crushed granola bars into her pocket, Kim edged over to have a closer look and blinked when she discerned the lipstick tube under the light of the glowstick. She bent to pick it up and held it for a moment, her eyes trailing absently to the small hole in the wall for which Shego was responsible.

Seconds later and possessed by an idea, Kim knelt in the snow and, uncapping the lipstick, began to scribble quietly on the rock wall. It took her about seven minutes to compose a hurried and rather shaky message with the deceptive cosmetic, one that would remain engraved in the belly of the mountain forever and hopefully gain the attention of a search party, should Global Justice think to send anyone to look underground:

**Kim and Shego trapped. Injured, few supplies. Must get out. Taking tunnel. Plz help. **

Kim paused, then wrote beneath that, **Love You, **and drew an arrow to indicate which direction she and Shego were going. She didn't sign it, leaving it as a note from both she and the villainess together—just in case. It couldn't hurt.

Stepping back over to her unconscious nemesis, Kim recapped and dropped the lipstick into her pocket. She slung the straps of the parachute around her arms and, hoping against hope, gave them an experimental tug. To her immense relief, Shego slid forward an inch or so over the snow in her cocoon-sled, and Kim grinned fiercely into the darkness as the created seams of the parachute held, loyal and steadfast. The teen superhero adjusted the straps a bit, letting them loop over and around her shoulders like a harness, before she started forward across the ledge, Shego trailing along behind her with the soft, scraping _sssssshh _of fabric over snow. Kim held the waning glowstick out in front of her like a tiny blue torch and chanced only a single glance back over her shoulder, hardly daring to let her eyes fall on the bloody snow that marked Shego's former presence, hardly daring to reexamine the words illuminated in flickering relief on the rock wall.

Forcing herself to look forward, Kim blinked tears of anxiety from the corners of her eyes before they could freeze there, wondering with a heavy heart if she'd just written her own epitaph—and if she'd condemned herself to an eventual shared grave, a lifetime of being twined in silent, icy harmony with Shego as her companion.

—To Be Continued...

**Notes: **Deeper and deeper they go, and longer and longer the chapters get! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Any helpful critiques, comments, and fluffy hats are very much appreciated.

This story is dedicated first and foremost to my friend Lizzie, who pestered me about writing Kigo until I finally gave in and did so. Thank you, Lizzie. I hope you like it.


	4. Chapter Four:  Mutation

**Warning: **This story will eventually be Kigo, and elements of said Kim/Shego goodness are present in this chapter. If you don't like that sort of thing, please read no more. Also, me writing Kigo fanfiction doesn't necessarily mean I despise Ron Stoppable or any other characters in the show. This pairing just happens to be my (absolute) favorite.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Kim Possible. Kim, Shego, Ron, Wade, Drakken, and all the rest are copyright to Disney, Bob Schooley, and Mark McCorkle.

**Stranded: Mutation**

"Dr. Possible?"

It was one of the nurses. Jenna, Dr. Possible realized as she leaned away from her patient to look at the woman standing in the OR doorway. Jenna worked at the front desk and had three children. Very cute children. Joey would be turning five within the week, blowing out an exaggerated amount of candles on a cake with chocolate frosting, because chocolate was his favorite. Jenna had said so once over coffee.

One of Dr. Possible's helpers mopped up the line of stitches upon which the woman was working. She only had a few more to go. Holding up a finger to Jenna to indicate her task would only take another moment or so, Dr. Possible returned her attention to her patient and tried to suppress the feelings of worried nausea that were starting up a game of volleyball in her abdomen. She tried to think of pleasant things, of her husband's smile in the morning and of the rocketship drawings taped helter-skelter to her refrigerator—of her Kimmie posing for pictures in the hall with that nice young boy that had eventually turned out to be a sack of filthy goo, quite literally.

She finished the last stitch and stood back with the softest of frowns; her gaze went immediately to Jenna. Dr. Possible tugged off her gloves and disposed of them in the nearest waistbin before she approached the woman, all too aware of the nurse's white face, quivering hands, quick respiration. Knowing that she was about to receive bad news, Dr. Possible took a deep breath, reached out to grasp her friend's arm, and guided her over to the nearest chair. Once Jenna had been settled, Dr. Possible knelt before her and asked in what she hoped sounded like a confident voice, "What is it, Jenna?"

The nurse looked up at Dr. Possible and bit her lip. After a moment, however, she folded her hands over her knees with a sigh and told the woman, "I just received a call from that Global Justice place Kim works for, Dr. Possible. They wanted to speak to you, but I told them you had a patient…" Trailing off, the woman floundered. Dr. Possible tipped her head in a display of patience despite the urgency gnawing at her insides. Something was terribly, terribly wrong—she knew it. The sirens of her woman's intuition were screaming.

"Yes, Jenna?" she prompted.

"It's Kim's friend Ron," Jenna blurted. "They have him in custody. He's been hurt—a few burns, they said, and a broken leg, nothing really serious… But Kim isn't with him."

Dr. Possible's heart sank like a stone between her collarbones. She imagined, for a horrible fleeting second, a cherrywood casket and roses drying in the sun and the sobs of her twins and husband in the background, but banished the thought with the firm resolution of a mother who has a very strong faith in the abilities of her offspring. Around the lump in her throat she found herself querying, her words soft, "What did they say about Kim? What did _Ron _say about Kim?"

Jenna hesitated. Frowning deeply now, Dr. Possible clasped the woman by her upper arms and demanded, struggling not to shake the befuddled nurse, "_Jenna. _Tell me."

"Ron described an avalanche. Global Justice is looking—and they'll keep looking," the nurse added as though to soothe Dr. Possible, who tightened her hands at the word _avalanche_. "But they haven't found Kim yet, or that villain girl—"

"Shego's with her?" Dr. Possible interrupted her friend, recalling to memory the list of villains her daughter fought. She remembered a smirking young woman in a tight green and black bodysuit. A young woman with glowing hands.

The nurse gave a harried nod of recognition. "That was her name, yes. Global Justice said Ron told them he saw Shego and Kim fighting before the avalanche happened."

Dr. Possible released the nurse and pressed her face into her hands, making intimate friends with the lines of her palms before she lifted her head and stated quietly, "Then my Kimmie's got a good chance of coming out of this alive. Excuse me, Jenna—I have to go call my husband."

"Dr. Possible?" Jenna inquired, standing so quickly that Kim's mother knew she'd gotten over her shock. The nurse did, after all, have more important things to worry about: her son's impending birthday party being the first. Endless goodie bags, candle color choices, party hats, paper plates with dogs printed on them, streamers, decorations—all of it, a whirl of color and happiness and laughter and parental pride. Dr. Possible regarded her friend with a warmly tolerant gaze. She didn't blame Jenna in the least for having part of her mind on her home life.

"Yes?"

"Aren't you worried that Kim might be alone somewhere with a villain?"

Dr. Possible carefully considered her response. A conscious individual since birth, the brain surgeon was entirely against giving off the wrong impression through words; she usually kept her opinion to herself unless lecturing her children. Now, however, she exhaled thinly behind her paper mask and offered to her friend, "If she is alone with Shego, I feel comforted knowing she's with a _capable _person. Shego's a girl after Kim's own heart—trained in survival skills, stubborn, and passionate about what she does. I don't really think of her as a villain."

Smiling faintly once she was finished, Dr. Possible nudged past the nurse and quickened her pace to clear the OR doors. She pretended not to hear Jenna's faint musing of, "…but isn't Shego the green-handed one that knocks down buildings?" and kept a straight face even walking past the reception desk, where the other secretarial nurses gave her looks of mingled sympathy and encouragement. It was almost as though they expected Kim to be dead already—dead in the snow, dead in the cold, buried beneath a glistening white expanse that looked suspiciously like cake icing. Smiling falsely back at them, she walked until she found an empty lounge containing a pay phone and slipped in two obliging quarters, not even bothering to remove her mask as she asked to speak with her husband.

"Hi, honey!" her husband greeted her in his usual exuberant manner from the other end of the line after a short pause. Dr. Possible knew immediately that Global Justice hadn't gotten to him yet, and no small wonder—she could hear the roar of engines in the background. "What's up?"

"I need you to get us a plane," Dr. Possible told her husband quietly. Her mask felt like cardboard against her lips, rasping faintly, and she tugged it away at last to murmur, feeling a lump rising in her throat again, "Something's happened."

She spent the next few minutes updating her husband on what she knew and giving him the number to Global Justice, since he needed to know just where to direct their flight and what, if any, information they were lacking. Dr. Possible fully intended to engage in the search for her daughter—and her husband was coming with her, he declared firmly. She could almost hear him gathering his wits on the other end of the line, dragging his every fiber of confidence together to murmur to her just before they mutually hung up, "It'll be okay, dear. I'll take care of everything—and I'll be there soon."

Dr. Possible held the receiver in her hand until it began to click and beep irritably, and only when it asked her in a plaintive monotone for another quarter did she hang it up, fingers tensed about the sleek black handle. Biting her lips from the inside, she drew back slowly and moved to settle on the single couch in the lounge, glad for once that no one was here, that no one was present to see the tears begin to stream down her cheeks, drip from her chin, run down her throat to leave soft gray spots on the collar of her scrubs, her heart, her soul—glad that no one could see she was helpless, paralyzed with worry for the child for whom she worried day in and day out, the light of her life, the red-haired apple of her eye.

As she waited for her husband to arrive, Dr. Possible dropped her face anxiously into her hands and sobbed.

-------------------------

Kim Possible knew she'd been walking for hours.

She knew this because the glowstick, which was reputed to have a life of at least eight hours, had given out as a reliable light source at least three hours before now. She'd kept it with her, however, treasuring its faint and waning lumination, and had continued on into the darkness with a will. Limp strands of hair clung to her cheeks and forehead as she trudged almost mindlessly onward, her footsteps echoing in the chamber around them; she could feel her fingers bleeding, having been idly tracing over the wall at her side to keep herself both going in the same direction and from walking off onto a diverging path.

Her stomach ached with hunger, but she refused to eat any of their meager supplies under the pretense that she should spread them as far as possible between both she and Shego—and that Shego needed them more than she did. Her tongue was swollen in her mouth, and she found it nearly impossible to swallow now—not that she had anything of liquid measure to swallow. Snow had long since disappeared from beneath her feet, and the tunnel was just as empty as the heads of most high school quarterbacks, she thought in absent misery.

She'd been following the feeble trail of cold, crisp air along the far right side of the tunnel. She'd already encountered several forks and had waited quietly at each one, her head thrust forward, wetting her lips repeatedly until she felt the quiver of the breeze against them. Her shoulders were beginning to scream from the pressure of the straps; she'd eased out of her harness many times to skitter backward to check on Shego, who proved to be an alarmingly silent, still, and rather deep sleeper. The woman gave her not even the slightest bit of acknowledgement whenever Kim lightly tapped her cheeks and lips, fearing that she'd hurt and break anything else if she touched it—she would've thought Shego dead if the woman's pulse hadn't been strong at both the wrist and throat, a stubborn drum beneath the pale skin.

Kim stumbled now, sank to her knees, and lowered her head with a soft moan of frustration. In a rare display of temper she slammed her fists into the solid rock floor, moan increasing to a snarl, baring her teeth against the darkness and the cold and the blood seeping from beneath her fingernails, ignoring the dull spike of pain that lanced up through each of her wrists. "You won't beat me," she growled softly. She could barely make out of the shape of her bangs hanging in front of her eyes.

Gazing at this shape through somewhat blurry vision, Kim found her lips curving up into a smile despite the situation. _What a fashion crisis_, she mused, and reached up to paw at the lank hair in bemusement. _Bonnie would have a field day if she ever saw me like this._

The sounds of her frustration died off into the abysmal darkness of the cave. Kim rested, listening intently to the hitching rhythm of Shego's breathing—she allowed herself a full five minutes of no progress, her hands splayed on her knees and her head bowed forward. Only when her eyelids began to droop did she begin to force herself upright again, thrusting her left palm forward to brace with it. She shrieked in startlement when her fingers plunged directly into the frigid wetness of a body of water, and it took her a moment of shaking those fingers in irritation before she realized the importance of her find. Breath sobbing out in relief, Kim wriggled out of the straps once more and crawled forward to gingerly dip a hand into the water both willingly and experimentally, letting her fingers splay beneath the surface.

It was deep, she found, and possessed a strong current. When she listened closely she could hear the certain _shhuuuusssh _of water against rock—she could hear it gurgling in the walls, the laughter and lifeblood of the mountain. Rolling up her sleeve as far as it would go, Kim sank her arm into the water and stretched her fingers down, grinning when her fingers brushed the smooth stone and sediment of the bottom of the stream. She cupped her fingers and carefully drew a handful of the icy liquid to her lips, sniffed it, and tipped it in supreme wariness to her lips for the smallest taste.

She soon parted her lips to take an entire mouthful, slanting her eyes shut in bliss. _It's heaven, _she thought as the liquid ran over her swollen tongue and down her sticky throat; she was finally able to clear it, turning her head to the side to spit, washing out her mouth several times since brushing her teeth was an impossibility. Only after she felt as though the carcass of whatever had crawled into her mouth and died was gone did she drink, measuring each swallow strictly to quell the distressed roilings of her angry stomach. She washed her face, gasping at the temperature of the water—and then she looked at Shego, biting her lips and tucking her hands beneath her underarms to warm them for a moment.

Feeling and sensation slowly crept back into her hands. Kim flexed them and rubbed them for a bit, then rolled forward to crawl over to the parachute cocoon. She seized the edge and carefully dragged the entire thing, Shego and all, over to the stone bank of the stream, crooking her legs as she sat at her enemy's head and gazed down through the darkness at the pale face of the woman who had given her such grief over the years.

Shego didn't look vicious when she slept. At least, Kim didn't _think _she looked vicious—she couldn't really see Shego to amount to much, what with the glowstick on its very last legs and exhaustion making her vision spin. She knew, however, that Shego's characteristic sneer was gone, leaving the dark lips in a shallow, completely unobnoxious curve. As she dipped her hand into the water again and delicately slid the other into her enemy's raven hair to tip up the woman's head against her knee, Kim reflected that it might just be possible for Shego to be human too.

It took a few minutes—and several unsuccessful dribbles down Shego's chin, which Kim hastily mopped up lest the woman feel the coldness, come awake, and cleave her in two—for Kim to get Shego to open her mouth. As she siphoned liquid down the pale throat, stroking it now and again to ensure the woman swallowed, Kim closed her eyes and struggled to suppress the dark flowers of exhaustion blooming in the fields of her consciousness. She could feel her entire body drooping in a unified protest against walking anymore, against trudging through the darkness like a sled dog without any real destination in sight, and she ran her thumb over Shego's lips to dry them with a soft hiss of indecision. To wait meant to risk it—risk it all, risk dying down here, risk losing Shego's legs forever, risk losing the opportunity to ever see her family and friends. To go on meant… well, eventual collapse, and where would that get them?

_I need to sleep. _Kim looked down at the woman whose head rested so quietly in her lap and frowned. Guilt nibbled at the edges of her mind, ever present, relentless, and it was with something like awe that Kim cupped Shego's cheek and turned her head again, just the slightest bit, to squint and gaze at the bruise around the woman's eye. It was beginning to go down a bit. _She'll be able to open that eye when she wakes up_, Kim thought confidently, then swallowed hard when the adjacent musing surfaced: _If she wakes up at all._

Berating herself for thinking such things, Kim guided the glowstick down Shego's body. The lumps of Shego's feet were visible at the end of the parachute cocoon, both entirely still. _What's she going to do when we get out of here? _Kim found herself wondering. _She can't be a villain anymore—or, at least, not a villain like she was before. No more sneaking into buildings, no more martial arts…_

As though reading her mind, Shego tipped her head in Kim's lap and exhaled thinly, a sigh of mixed regret and pain. Kim froze as the woman, likely seeking warmth, rolled her head and began to nuzzle her way along the inside of the superhero's knee and lower thigh, lips parting to release a rather raspy, grated sound in soft, lulling intervals.

_Shego's purring, _Kim realized, curving her hand over the dark skull. The thought was quickly followed by the irrational musing of, _I'm glad she likes me_.

Kim paused.

Does _Shego like me? _Kim wondered. _She saved my life because I'm 'worth it' to her, whatever that means—but we aren't friends. We've never been friends._ Settling back in the darkness, Kim was surprised to feel a stab of regret between her collarbones stronger, sharper, and far more painful than a roundhouse kick. It flooded her mouth with a bitter, metal taste; it nearly made her gag, and she rubbed the spot ruefully, wishing with a peculiar bit of her soul that she and Shego _were _friends. _I'll bet she'd be fun to shop with_, Kim found herself pondering. _If I could actually keep her from stealing… She'd be honest about whether or not something looked good on me._

The teen superhero fought the darkness pressing in against her on all sides by imagining herself standing outside a dressing room with Shego in Club Banana, Kim modeling a dress before a full-length mirror whilst Shego critically examined the notch and fall of every seam. She imagined the dark lips of her enemy twisting into a soft frown in the mirror above her shoulder, imagined the villainess reaching out to pinch a bit of fabric above the soft swell of a hip to murmur, phantom voice faint between her temples, _Not your color, princess. You should try green._

"Right," Kim muttered to herself. The word echoed faintly in the cavern around her, bouncing off the walls, skimming over the surface of the frigid stream to her left, and it was to the faint reverberation that she responded, sinking slowly against the nearby wall with Shego's head in her lap, "She'd never go shopping with me. She doesn't _like _me. She can't—she's a villainess. She's… well, she's _Shego_."

Not to mention any store in the Middleton mall would be flooded with security guards the moment Shego put a toe over the threshold. Kim frowned, reaching up to rub her forehead—she could hardly believe she was thinking about taking a shopping trip with her nemesis anyway, a nice little frolic back home that would never, _could _never happen. Shego was her enemy; they fought like cats; they despised each other.

Kim stilled her fingers and slowly closed her eyes, letting her hand fall to twine it with the other in her lap. _That's not true_, she found herself musing. The thought occurred to her as a simple revelation, the same way the notion occurs to a small child that asparagus really doesn't taste all that bad—it just looks funny. Kim Possible found no hatred in herself for any one being: not for any of the snooty cheerleaders she commanded or the villains she fought, not for Bonnie or Drakken or Monkeyfist. And especially no hatred for Shego, the villainess who'd pressed a foot to her throat on the mountain and had demanded to see in Kim a love for life, who'd pulled her close as the world around them surged to eradicate everything in a wave of white.

_Maybe she doesn't like me, but I… well. I guess she's all right, _Kim allowed, and couldn't keep a wry smile from flickering over her lips. "Ron would so freak," she breathed aloud. Her voice sounded alien in the cave. Faint, soft, it reverberated against the walls and across the stream and into nothingness, leaving her with only the grating hiss of Shego's purr for company.

Kim touched her cheek to the wall of the tunnel and exhaled slowly, thinly, then slanted her eyes open the tiniest bit and looked down at Shego through the quivering blinds of her eyelashes. Lacing her fingers through the dark hair and caressing as she might for a friend in the crisis of boy trouble, the teen superhero kept her eyes on her nemesis until her vision blurred and bled and went black, and knew no more but for a dreamless sleep punctuated by the sensation of falling, falling fast and far into the darkness with cold arms clamped about her waist.

-------------------------

Coming out of sleep was like swimming toward the surface of an ocean from a great depth. Shego paddled desperately with her arms toward the light barrier, her lungs and every muscle in her body screaming for air, her hair drifting in a tangling black web about her face. Her legs were dead beneath her, dragging her down, leaden weights of incredible uselessness; her blood drummed in her ears like the repetitive and staggered rumble of distant thunder. A cramp seized her chest and she parted her lips at last, unable to help it—she sucked in a lungful of seawater, certain she was going to drown, certain the light barrier was going to spiral away into darkness—

A rush of oxygen brought Shego bursting out of sleep and dreams. The ocean around her disappeared in an explosion of green light and a sensation not of drowning, but of painful liquid fire pressing into her from the waist down, twining from navel to pubic bone to knees to shins to ankles to the very tips of her toes. She felt like throwing up and crying and screaming all at once, but her heart leapt into her throat and she gagged instead. Her hands curled into fists in the air above her thighs, both of them ablaze with a bonfire of plasma. And it wasn't just them: her entire body burned, roasted, _surged _with energy that was supposed to remain in her hands, with tongues of leaping green flame and dancing tendrils of searing heat specked with black matter.

The numbness below her waist was gone, nothing but a memory, and Shego knew the paralysis was too when her legs buckled up beneath her and began to spasm under the flames. She could feel the ripple of every muscle she'd ever used and then some—the pain was almost too much. She couldn't gather enough breath to scream, and the world around her was a mix of flickering shadows and eerie emerald light thrown from her own twisting, quivering form. She saw Kim's face above her, saw the girl's eyes snap open as she writhed in the teen superhero's lap. _Too bad I can't enjoy it_, Shego thought fleetingly, irrationally, and turned her head to thrust her face into the curve of Kim's stomach. Her teeth chattered in her mouth, and her skin felt almost white-hot under the strict confines of her bodysuit: it felt like it was bubbling, cooking away, evaporating in the plasma.

She was literally boiling herself into nonexistence, and she had no idea how to stop.

She vaguely heard Kim yelp as her gloves melted for the second time in just a few hours. The superhero, who'd reached in to foolishly twine hands with her, jerked back and tried to shake away the plastic and nylon that dripped from Shego's palms onto hers, no better than butter in a microwave. The rancid smell of burning flesh wafted to the nostrils of the villainess. Her stomach flipflopped and somersaulted, disturbed; Shego experienced an instant's concern for Kim and wished, more than anything, for a first aid kit.

Shego felt Kim lurch away from her still more. Her head fell out of the teen's lap and onto the parachute and the hard stone floor of the cave, and when her raven temple struck the latter, stars flared into sharp relief at the edges of her vision. She finally found breath enough in her body to scream, but her exhale came out a wail instead, a hoarse sob of words far more revealing than first intended. Fear of abandonment seethed in her—Shego didn't want to be alone while she died, please no, please not here in the darkness and fire and burning, not in the flames she knew were borne of her own blood, from a meteor and mutations she couldn't begin to understand.

"Kimmienonono_pleasedon'tLEAVE_!" she half-howled, half-sobbed, and added on for good measure after drawing in another rattling breath, all sense of pride lost in the fierce crackle of plasma and energy, "_HELP!_"

Shego saw Kim kneel a few feet away, a shadow in the haze of green; there was a faint hissing sound and a glint of silvery-shine. _Water_, Shego thought giddily. _It's water—Kimmie found water and she's got her hands in it, got her hands in it because I burned them, I burned them and I'm burning now too and it hurts and please, make it stop, Kimmie make it stop make it stop please I don't want it KIM—_

Kim spun on her heel to seize the edge of the parachute, cried out something unintelligible—Shego felt one of the girl's burned hands sink into her hair before was tipped, parachute and all, twitching and shuddering and burning alive, into a mind-numbing cocoon of liquid and darkness.

Parts of her brain formerly occupied by pain came into hazy focus as the plasma on her body winked out. Bubbles fizzled into her foggy vision, and she bit her lips from the inside to keep herself from breathing. The sensation of being roasted like a turkey on Thanksgiving diminished just as quickly as it had come upon her, and she quivered and drifted in the heaven of numbness and cold, hardly deigning to care as pins and needles swept through her limbs. _Kimmie put me in the water_, she mused, and slanted her eyes against the temperature. _She got the gumption. I'm alive—I can feel my legs. And my plasma… _She swallowed, noting the absence of the emerald energy in her hands._ It's gone for now… _

Her lungs ached in her chest, reminding her that oxygen was vital to survival, that she couldn't stay forever in the wonderland of wetness and fading pain. Besides, it was getting frigid rather quickly—Shego's more primitive instincts urged her to kick her legs, to battle the current tugging at her hair, her face, the parachute undulating about her person like a great tan jellyfish. And then there was the hand in her hair, tugging so fiercely it made her grit her teeth: Kim's hand, trying to guide her back to the surface, to keep the link between them whole.

Agony lanced through Shego's lower half at the first kick, but it was a _kick_, _MOVEMENT_, and she rejoiced despite the pain. She tried again, and again, and again, pressing up into the hand in her hair. She felt in herself a fear that the flames would come back when she surfaced again: she worried the plasma would devour her as it had her gloves. There was a rising horror in her strong form. Suppose she melted in her own power when she hit open air? Suppose she'd regained her legs only to have them scalded away again—

Kim gave a mighty heave and, following her protesting scalp with a string of mental cursing, Shego surged against a slippery stone bank and scrabbled for purchase. Her hands were tangled in sodden parachute; she barked her knuckles against the rock and felt her lips curve into her characteristic snarl, a desperate expression. She spat and gagged and choked the moment she felt air against her cheeks, partly because she needed to breathe and partly because the shock of the cold let her do nothing otherwise—water streamed from her hair and ears and down the nape of her neck. She tensed in panic, expecting to go up in flames or plasma or some sort of emerald inferno, but the power in her hands grumbled placidly and her legs only screamed at her, a pain with which she was familiar but not afraid.

There was no more burning. No more agony—no fear of death by fire.

Spent, Shego collapsed onto the bank of the stream—_Kimmie found water_, her subconscious echoed gleefully—and closed her eyes. Her legs and part of the parachute drifted in the stream behind her; the current pulled at her boots and the great mass of fabric, but the villainess couldn't bring herself to slide forward another inch. She dropped her cheek onto wet stone, parted her lips, and concentrated on breathing, eyes slanted against the droplets that drained from her hair into her vision. The entire world wobbled, and when she felt moisture on her chapped lips, she sighed heavily and licked at it with feeble intent. Her tongue felt like sandpaper.

For several long moments, there was nothing but an exchange of ragged breathing as the girls struggled to regain their respective composures.

"Shego?" Kim murmured at length in the darkness. Her voice came from somewhere up above, and Shego assumed the teen superhero was leaning over her.

_Worrywart, _she groused to herself. _Then again, she did just see me on fire. I guess it kinda freaked her out a little. …freaked ME out a little, too_. Aloud she asked, her voice more quavery and old womanish than she liked, "What is it, princess? I don't know if you noticed, but I'm trying to rest a little here." A hoarse laugh forced its way out of her throat; it hurt her, making such a brisk exit. "Since I was just, you know," she continued conversationally, "roasting alive and all."

"Are you all r-right?" Kim asked. There was concern in her voice that trumped the tears, a richness and a warmth that made Shego smile secretively, proudly into the wet stone of the streambank. Kim was still grounded despite the circumstances, perfectly in her right mind and rising to the challenge with as much determination as she could muster. Shego felt a mix of gladness and strumming pride at the thought—if she was going to rely on someone, it might as well be Kim. She felt the teen superhero's hands hovering in the air inches above her person, too scared to touch but still worried, still anxious.

"Y-yeah," Shego rasped, her lips trembling for the cold, and closed her eyes. "Think so." She turned her head up and, for reasons she couldn't fathom, tried to offer Kim an encouraging smile. "And good news, pumpkin. I can feel my legs again." Her words collided giddily with one another, so happy they were almost false; so faint they were almost lost, swallowed up by the darkness and disbelief that something so miraculous could happen here, happen to them, happen to _Shego_ in the depths of the mountain.

She watched the vague outline of Kim's head nod in the darkness. "I saw you moving them," the girl admitted. The relief—gladness? Doubt? Shego wondered—in her tone was palpable. And then, somewhat meekly, "Does it hurt? Your back—I can't see it. N-not with it so dark. And I don't want to ask you to use your plasma to give us a little light either, not after what just happened." Kim paused, asking in the next breath in a tone both curious and desperate for reassurance, "Has it ever done that before, Shego?"

_Exploded? Gotten out of control? Felt like it was going to consume me from the inside out? What do you THINK, princess? _Shego bit her lip and tried to calm the mix of fear and bitterness roiling about within her. Fear tugged at her strong heart and made it beat faster; the throbbing ache in her legs brought tears prickling like thorns to the corners of her eyes. Blinking them away, she hissed at her companion, "No, Kimmie, it hasn't."

Kim nudged closer to Shego. Her pants scraped faintly against the wet stone. "Maybe we do need a little light," she breathed, and Shego jerked when one of the teen superhero's hands came to rest on her shoulder. "Will you try, Shego? I want to look at your back. I want to see your skin."

Shego muffled a groan at the rising apprehension that was making her stomach convulse with knots. "You sure you can handle it, princess?" she purred into the darkness. Kim squirmed uncomfortably and she felt a little better.

Lifting one bare hand, Shego snapped her fingers and winced as plasma flared into being around the pale digits. Panic lanced through her as the green flames guttered softly: but it was just her breath making them move, making them dance, and after a moment she lifted her hand as she might a torch, shedding light on everything within about ten feet of them. Kim, crouched almost over her as previously thought, looked thin and scared and trapped; she wrung her hands nervously, and Shego took a moment to notice that the teen superhero's palms were already beginning to angrily blister.

"How's it look?" she asked Kim through gritted teeth. And then she continued, "Hurry it up—I can't hold it long. I'm tired." She couldn't believe she was admitting weakness to an enemy, let alone Kim Possible, but it seemed imperative that the teen know she was on a schedule here, and that the schedule belonged not to her, but to Shego and the candle of plasma she held in her fingers.

Kim leaned over her. Shego turned her head to look up the length of the girl's body, wreathed in green, and concentrated on the determined hinge of Kim's jaw rather than the blaze in her fingers. Her mind wandered—it was better not to force the plasma, she'd learned over the years. Keep it flowing by not thinking about it at all; act as though it was as natural as a heartbeat, as easy as breathing. A muscle in Kim's jaw twitched and Shego blinked: unbidden but affected nevertheless, the plasma in the villain's fingers fell lower, only just smoldering.

"It's just a scar," Kim said. Her fingers, still fastened over Shego's shoulder, tightened considerably. Her breath hissed out in disbelief. "It was a hole before. I could see the bone—Shego, God, you were _bleeding… _there was a hole the size of my hand in your back and it's _gone_! There's just a green sca—"

"_Green_?" Shego snarled. She couldn't help herself, and the plasma in her hand roared higher with her distress besides. "How green? I'm already _green_, Kimmie! Is it darker? What?"

To her surprise, Kim gave her shoulder a swat and informed her imperiously, "It looks just like any other scar. It's only a little bit darker, yeesh. Vain much?"

"Well, when you said it was the size of your _hand_, Kimmie…"

"It's not like that now," muttered the girl. Disbelief and bewilderment crept into her voice again, and Shego made an effort to roll onto her side to give Kim her full attention. Her legs screamed protest; one of them gave a faint twitch. Bracing her foot against the slippery surface of the bank, Shego pushed herself out of the stream completely and lifted her head the slightest bit, her cheeks drying quickly in the heat from the plasma at her hand. "It's more like a line," said Kim after hovering over the villainess. Her lips curved upward—a smile? Shego wasn't certain. "From the middle of your back to just where the bodysuit cuts off. It's a wide scar"—she held up her pinky to indicate just how wide, since Shego arched her eyebrows in question—"but it doesn't look bad."

Shego kicked her right foot. Her boot was full of water. She could hear and feel the liquid sloshing around her heel, soaking her thermal sock and making her generally uncomfortable. She clenched her teeth and sat up in a single rocking motion, ignoring the protests from Kim at her side, and reached down to heave away the boot after blowing out the plasma still circling idly about her cuticles. A gout of water, thus freed, splattered onto the stones, and the villainess quietly listened to the liquid drain as she worked at the other boot and gathered her thoughts.

"Your wounds don't normally heal that way, do they?" inquired Kim.

The villainess turned the other boot upside down, shaking her head. "No. Cuts and scratches need bandaids, burns need ointment. Black eyes need steak." Shego tried her best to keep her puzzlement to herself. "I've got a bruise on the back of my arm that's been there for days, not to mention it still hurts. I should… I should still be down and out."

She heard Kim turn toward her in the darkness. Reaching out to give her side a nudge that was, perhaps, experimentally encouraging, the teen superhero murmured, "Ever had a life-threatening injury before?"

"Please, princess." The villainess rolled her eyes. "I fight _you_, remember?"

"I'm going to be polite," Kim said, tone frosty and touch withdrawn, "and ignore that. Maybe your plasma isn't the only thing you got from your mutations, Shego. Did you ever think of that?" The teen superhero paused, ending at last with a quiet, "Maybe getting close to death triggered something you didn't know about before."

Shego blinked into the darkness, then drew her aching legs up to her chest and rested her chin on the shelf of her knees, considering. Kim had a point. Her entire body was a single agonizing throb, but again a throb that was fading fast compared to the healing rate of injuries she'd sustained in battles beforehand. The memories of being numb from the waist down seemed more like a nightmare than a past reality, a fleeting fear banished by the soothing sensation of wiggling toes and quivering knees. Even the pain encouraged her: at least she could feel it. At least she wasn't half a person anymore.

"Whatever it was, Shego," Kim laughed nervously into the darkness, "I don't think I need to tell you that it just made you a lot more dangerous."

Shego turned her head and squinted in what she hoped was Kim's direction. The potential thrill at being considered more dangerous to her enemy was dampened by the teen superhero's tone of voice: by the faint quiver behind the laughter, by the hiss of cloth over stone as Kim edged a few inches away from her. Forcing her gaze away from the girl, Shego bit her lips from the inside as a wave of self-disappointment and anxiety sloshed about in her stomach.

She had a sneaking suspicion Kim Possible was afraid of her—afraid of her for her abilities both known and unknown, strength and power and healing and plasma. When she was honest with herself, and when she thought of being engulfed in a seething inferno of emerald flame, Shego had to admit: she was afraid too. She hugged her knees a little more tightly in the darkness for it, pondering and agonizing and wondering just how many secrets her blood was keeping from her, pulsing deep and strong and rich in the corridors and chambers of her fiercely beating heart.

—To Be Continued…

**Notes: **Agh! I am so, so sorry this took such a long time to post. Life's been busy and I've not been able to write nearly so much as I'd like, but hopefully that will change now with the end of this semester in sight. Thank you all very much for the helpful critiques and comments. I've taken them all into consideration—please, keep them coming! I can only improve with input. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it; I also hope it was worth the wait. Any helpful critiques, comments, and fluffy hats are very much appreciated.

This story is dedicated first and foremost to my friend Lizzie, who pestered me about writing Kigo until I finally gave in and did so. Thank you, Lizzie. I hope you like it.


End file.
